


Lost Tracks

by SoftRegard



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No War, Character Study, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, bisexual awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-05-08 08:49:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14690613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftRegard/pseuds/SoftRegard
Summary: When his on-going sexual evolution, and big crush on his best friend, come together to pull the rug out from under his feet - Prompto tries to keep upright as best he can.





	1. Unfair we're not somewhere,

He was never a hyperactive or fidgety kid - whatever restlessness people associated with him only came later. The few classmates that went through the transition of grade school to high school with him all noted his physical changes well enough, but the particularly observant of them could also chart his change of _pace_ as well, the faster way he navigated the world: Prompto went from being the quiet kid in the back of the room that started out of windows to the jumpy sprig who made little mountains with the eraser debris on his desk.

The only times he really stills any more is when he’s taking photos, or thinking about it. Even when he’s not thinking about taking _photos_ themselves, his brain catalogues things in images - those still moments that offer that immutable _something_ when looking at them. An experience. An exchange of ideas. A great escape.  

Like now, standing in a half-packed subway train, hand clutching the bar and studying the stark white of the headphone strings hanging around Noctis’ neck: two crisp lines against the immaculate black of his t-shirt, disappearing around his back, and then peaking out again on the other side and ending in earbuds the shape of teardrops. As the train grinds along, the little buds bounce and clack together where they rest against Noctis’ chest. There’s no logo or print on the shirt - the crown prince has to be very careful of what brands he’s seen endorsing - so the image is uninterrupted; a big, bold swath of black with skinny white lines dashed across like chalk on tarmac; milk streaked across a marble tabletop;

 _two pale fingers dragging across the front of Prompto’s black boxer briefs last night_ -

\- among many, many things. But that, most of all.

The train is a place of innate strangeness, Promoto thinks absently: the passengers are quiet nearly all of the time, yet the cabins are noisy from the screeching metal and machinery. Motionless, sleepy people in a box moving at high speeds. Control and chaos, all at once.

It feels appropriate. Exactly - yet, also not at all - what a Morning After should be.

“You’re staring,” says Noctis, quiet as he waves his hand in front of Prompto’s face. His fingertips are very pink this morning.

“Sorry,” says Prompto, blinking -  then blinks again to swat away the black and white afterimage - stripes like prison uniforms from those old cartoons; Beetlejuice chic. Not at all like the real thing, which are orange and bright like those shiny things they put on bicycle wheels so that cars don’t hit them in the dark.   

“What’re you thinking about?” asks Noctis, light. Too light. He’s nervous, like Prompto.

They haven’t had the conversation yet - are they going to do it here, on a public subway? Hell of a way to do it, if so.

“Probably the same thing you’re thinking about,” Prompto murmurs, shuffling on his feet. One of the worn-out laces of his sneakers is falling loose from its bunny ears. He should’ve went with the boots - more stylish, more befitting of someone who has shacked up with the _crown prince of Lucis_ . “Or like, what I _assume_ you’re thinking about. I hope you’re thinking about it - because now it’ll just be awkward if you weren’t.”

Noctis snorts. “Well now I’m thinking about it.”

“Great, awesome…”

“Prompto,” Noctis nudges him with his elbow and leans closer so he can lower his voice. Not that anyone else is paying them any attention - the closest passenger is an old woman who’s dozing off so strongly that she’s drooling a little on her paisley blouse. “Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Does that ever work, you think?” asks Prompto, watching the wet patch on the woman’s front slowly grow in size. It’s slow-going, but he thinks it’ll get to thumb size by the time they reach their stop. “Just _telling_ people not to freak out? I mean, freak-outs by definition are kind of uncontrolled, right? If you could just _tell_ -”

“ _Prompto_ ,” Noctis leans over and hooks his chin over Prompto’s shoulder, looking up at him with those unreasonably pretty eyes (who needs eyelashes that thick?). There’s a small, devilish little grin on his face. “Chill.”

It’s the touch, rather than the command, that gets him to relax. Even if it’s bony and digging hard into the muscle of his shoulder. He thinks of it as an anchor or a point of intense gravitational pull that keeps all the strips of his dignity and his nerves from fluttering away in the wind.

He’s not actually a babbler. Sure he can be chatty, but rambling has never been one of his weaknesses. It’s just that Noctis already disrupts so much of what he’s thought true about himself, so why not this, too?

They don’t say another word until they reach their stop, quiet with the understanding that they’re going to find a place to grab some food and talk about it without having dozens of people around to overhear. And talk about it they _will_ , because Prompto isn’t sure that he can deal with all this buzzing under his skin for much longer. And not just buzzing, either - because he can still feel the phantom brushes of Noct’s breath against throat and fingers on his thighs if the thinks about it hard enough, and everything in his animal brain is cooking up ways to get them back for real.

As they’re getting off, he turns to look at the front of the lady’s blouse - and yeah: Thumb-sized, just under the left collarbone.

 _Called it_ , he thinks to himself. Strangely proud, like he’s a regular Oracle or something.

He looks ahead, at the slope of Noctis’ shoulders that roll back and forth as he walks, at the tight taper of his waist and the way his hair bounces as he goes. Prompto looks at all of him, and wonders if he’s got the guts to try and predict _that_ future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i listened to too much arctic monkeys and vomited out a pretentious, experimental fic about prompto's thirsy bisexual awakening. 
> 
> starting short - but we'll get rolling in no time. enjoy!


	2. misbehavin' for days,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Age 16.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooooof, i'm sorry for how long this took - real life kind of jumped on my back and wouldn't get off. please, enjoy!

The train ride happens somewhere when he’s 20, but if Prompto is honest with himself - and he often _is_ \- it’s been a long time coming. There were stepping stones leading to this moment, peppered across his adolescence. He could map them out, if he really wants to:

There’s lemon candy and a terrible house party at 16; he remembers it in a kaleidoscope of polaroids and ticket stubs and sticky notes.

There’s Gladio and two bottles of beer perspiring in the summer heat, at the tender underage of 17.

At 18, a horribly awkward moment sandwiched between Lady Lunafreya and Nyx Ulric at a carnival funhouse. To this day, if he thinks about it he will find himself curling into himself like a shy armadillo, too embarrassed to do anything else.

If Prompto were a bottle of wine, then 19 would be his bad year - luckily, Ignis comes in for the save. He still owes him one for that.

At 20...Prompto’s still thinking about 20, still too _in it_ to say. He’s still working out its rhythm and is just getting the hang of the chorus, but he as he watches Noct grab them a table at the ice cream shop - white earbuds swinging across the flat of his chest as he leans forward and pulls out a chair - he thinks 20 is looking pretty good.

*

He’s noticed a lot about girls a lot since starting high school; the summer uniforms with pleated skirts and knee high socks give him a lot to look at, a lot to think about. Beyond the growing feelings of sexual interest though, Prompto often imagines taking out his camera and capturing pictures of their glittering ankle bracelets and lips plumped with gloss. Ever since he hit puberty, girls have become a constant distraction.

Which is fine. He likes to think he has a handle on it.

Boys, though - he doesn’t know what to do with that just yet.

“You ever notice that girls have little tapered wrists,” he mutters to Noctis, watching the girls’ volleyball team from across the field from where they sit on the track. He reaches out and holds the tips of his fingers apart a few inches, trying to demonstrate what he means, but his fingers don’t capture the picture he has in his head very well at all. “But guys’ are like, more square-ish?”

“...What?”

Noctis pops his head up in the middle of stretching, hands still reaching for his ankles. His socks are glaring white in the afternoon sunlight - courtesy of Ignis, Prompto guesses. His own have holes at the heel and the little animal prints are faded to blotches. What were previously charming little golden chocobos now look like misshapen lemons on the verge of full rot, brown and totally wonky. Not cute at all. Mentally, he makes a note to himself to go shopping after school. It’s a small thing, but it reminds him that he’s keeping company with a _freakin’ prince_ , and Prompto’s spent so much of his life feeling not up to snuff as is...

“Y’know...they’re different,” says Prompto, feeling a mite more embarrassed with every passing second. Sometimes he says things that feel perfectly understandable, only to realize when it comes tumbling out of his mouth that he needs to give more context. A lead-up. A primer.

“You don’t say,” says Noctis, drier than tarmac. “Girls and boys are different.”

“Oh come on,” groans Prompto, hands flailing. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

Noctis doesn’t have the penchant for hard teasing that his big bodyguard does (Gladiolus, who he’s only met a handful of times and each time had been an exercise in not wilting like a flower - dude was _scary_ ), but when he indulges his voice takes on an easy, slow drag that distracting as hell. Prompto isn’t sure when he’s started to notice it...maybe around the time that other guys changing in the locker rooms started being drawing his eye more than not, when their straining forearms and rippling backs started joining the ankle bracelets and lip gloss in his daydreams. He doesn’t know how to respond to it - that breathy, raspy way Noctis sometimes talks - so he _doesn’t_.

 _Hormones_ , he thinks, _are the worst ever_.

Prompto clears his throat and changes the subject, “So, wanna come over to the studio today? If the package tracking is right, my copy of Flan Flayers 3 should be delivered today!”

Noctis lets it go, nodding as he bends down to stretch again, his t-shirt pulling taut over the expanse of his back. Prompto has the strangest urge to tap at his shoulder blades, maybe to see if they sound hollow, as though his friend were some made up hallucination brought forth to torment him. “I’m game.”

*

Prompto hadn’t known what to do with the garage at first.

One morning his dad told him that he can take over the garage and use it for whatever he wanted, as it was just collecting dust otherwise. His parents liked to park outside anyway, and as they were rarely home it just didn’t make sense to leave it empty.  

Dad even suggested trying to turn it into a darkroom - not that they really had the money for it, not that Prompto would have the know-how to set it up; but it was a gesture, evidence that he knew at least _something_ of Prompto’s interests despite his absence. Prompto got it - thanked him for it, and said he’ll see what he can make out of it.

So, he got a couch.

An acquaintance at school mentioned her parents wanted to get rid of theirs, and Prompto offered to take it off their hands. Its condition was not good enough to sell so they were planning on chucking it at a junkyard, so at his expression of interest they handed it off to him for free - even taking care of its transport. It was the first addition to his new...whatever it was.

He wasn’t not sure, and still isn’t, months later. He’s not married enough for it to be a “man cave”, and it’s not like he sleeps in there often enough for it to replace his bedroom.

So he calls it his studio. Hopefully, the precursor to a _real_ studio one day.

The couch is an old, olive-coloured giant. The cushions are so big and plush that when Prompto throws himself on it he sinks several inches and feels like he’s sitting on a big green cloud. It’s huge enough that both he and Noctis can stretch out on it with room to spare.

The upholstery is a soft fabric, with frayed tears along the legs where the previous owners’ cat clearly went ham. He and Noctis don’t have any skill at fixing that sort of thing, so they decide to improvise and cover it up by staple gunning some fabric from old t-shirts: one side has red and black plaid, the other gets an old shirt from a band that he had only listened to in the first place because he wanted to impress a girl - _Sabertusk Apocalypse_.

At some point, he manages to bring one of the house TVs into the room and get it set up with his game system too. He nabs a hand-me-down mini fridge from Noctis when the prince moves apartments, and keeps it loaded with everything for everyone: soda for Noctis and energy drinks for himself. Ignis doesn’t really come around much but when he does, he’s got Ebony for him. He doesn’t know Gladiolus well enough yet, but he’ll figure something out for him when he does.

Beer would come later, when he’s old enough to buy it without his fake ID.    

The other big thing is the bench.

He clears off and cleans up the old workbench at the wall, luckily not an ordeal; dad wasn’t really a handyman and never used it. Prompto keeps his photography equipment there - scattered across its surface and filling up the shelves. This is the part that he likes the most because it feels like a real workspace. Sometimes he sits in front of it in the middle of the night, with no lights but the one from the desk lamp and daydreams that he’s a professional as he arranges and re-arranges the folder that he passes as a portfolio.

He’s taken to taking snaps of new places in Insomnia he’s never been before, and when he prints them out at home he pins them to the corkboard above the bench. It doesn’t take long before he’s got a flotsam of sticky notes next to his pictures; there’s no rhyme or reason to them, just whatever comes to his head sometimes, either when he’s taking the picture or when he’s staring at them after. Sometimes other people write them: like the shot of Noctis he stands on an apple crate they found in an alley, face splitting into a wide grin, arms flailing as he tries not to fall over - the little pink note tacked on next to it says, “how’s THEM apples?!” in Noctis’ scrawl, and for the life of him he can’t remember the in-joke.

The amount of pictures and notes had spread and spread over the past year, and currently they cover up the entire wall on that side of the garage. To make room for new ones he usually has to sacrifice an older one.

He’s here now, still in his track clothes and contemplating the wall as he waits for Noctis to finish up whatever he needs to and come around, holding a polaroid between restless fingers, flicking its edge with his nail and scanning his wall of memories, trying to figure out which one to put on the chopping block. He settles on one of a stray cat he’d found under a park bench about a year prior, and the half-ripped green note next it says, “I say Sabin - but Noct says Setzer!”, in his own messy writing. The picture and its accompanying note goes into one of the workbench drawers - a veritable abyss, at this point, where all the discarded ones go.

He tacks the new one up in its place: a shot of his own booted feet, with Noctis’ back in between them, looking out at the sunset ahead. Last weekend, they had taken the car out onto a cliff at the outskirts of the city, and Prompto had sat on the hood while Noctis leaned against its front. Softened by the light of the sun, Noctis’ hair looks like a big, poofy black dandelion. Instead of a note, he accompanies the picture with his movie ticket stub from the drive-in they’d scoped out. It’d been terrible but they had a laugh on the drive back, stopping for milkshakes and watching the sunset.

If he wants to try and figure when this weird thing with Noctis really started to get going, he’d probably pin it down to the moment Prompto had taken the shot, because all the elements of the scene have burned themselves into his brain seemingly forever: the snapping sound of the camera and the weight of it in his hands, Noctis’ shoulders shaking as he chuckled, the condensation from his milkshake soaking into his pant leg from where it rested next to his thigh on the hood of the car. He recalls, with startling intensity, the knobs of Noctis’ spine where they peeked from his shirt collar. The precise colour of his skin under the waning light of the sun, and that darker patch on the back of his shirt from his sweat.

That new, distracting drag of his voice when he teases people.

All of it.

Prompto’s eyes fly over his wall, and with a sinking dismay realizes most of the pictures are of Noctis: Noctis swimming, Noctis fishing, Noctis walking, Noctis eating. Prompto’s in there too, right next to him most of the time, and there’s even a handful of shots of Ignis. One or two of his parents. A handful of other people - classmates, the clerk at the convenience store down the block that’s known Prompto since he was a kid, his art teacher - but the amount of blue and black tells the eye all it needs to know about who Prompto is really thinking about all the time. About who captures his attention without even trying.

Noctis has seen the wall a thousand times by now, probably - why has he never said anything? Or hasn’t he noticed?

Prompto chews his lip, and for a moment vividly imagines tearing it all down and hiding all of it into the dark of his shelves, never to be seen again. But his eyes drift back to the newest addition, following the soft lines of Noctis’ shoulders and remembering how he’d felt that day, and the urge passes like a cloud.  

*

16 is the year Prompto and Noctis go to their one and only house party - a venture that lasts, approximately, one hour and twenty minutes.

It’s the birthday of somebody popular, and with Noctis being who he is, he always gets an invitation. Prompto’s got to give it to the girl, she’d been one of the more direct when coming by the prince’s desk to personally extend the invite; most people just kind of stumbled around a badly-worded suggestion, or stuck letters into his locker. Noctis had glanced over to Prompto as she asked and, noticing the attention, the girl had quickly offered Prompto a place at the party too. Sweetening the pot, maybe, hiking up the chances of Noctis showing up if his weird gangly blond friend were there, too.

It wasn’t a good feeling, knowing that people only thought he was noticeable in the context of Noctis. That wasn’t why they were friends.

Noctis had shrugged and told the girl he’d think about it.

“Do you want to check it out?” he asks Prompto, later, when the bell has rung and they were on their way to the arcade.

“I mean…” he could admit that he _was_ curious about it. Locker room talk and hall gossips about the big parties of the weekend were not nearly as interesting when you weren’t there. “Kind of? O-only if you’re into it, though.”

Noctis had given him a long, searching look. Then, he’d shifted his pack over his shoulder and said, “‘Kay. Let’s go, then.”

*

There’s a lot of alcohol, courtesy of many so-and-so’s big brothers and sisters. Prompto snags a cup and wings it on the cola-to-booze ratio; when he takes a sip, he nearly chokes.

“Prompto, that’s almost three quarters rum,” Noctis raises a brow. “What’d you expect?”

“I dunno! I’ve never done this before,” he wonders if it would be cool to just leave the cup somewhere, because he’s sure as hell not going to try and finish it.

Noctis snorts, crossing his arms. He’s not drinking because he needs to watch himself; there’s just too many people with camera phones around them jumping at the chance to film him. Not that most people would begrudge a young man for something as mild as a little underage drinking, but Prompto knows that his friend wants to fly under the radar as much as possible. Maybe Ignis would chew him out for it, or maybe his dad would give him the Disappointed Parent Face.

Gods, the Disappointed Parent Face must be so much worse when your parent is the _king_.

The music is loud, and the people are even louder. As the two of them walk around the house, Prompto clutching his cup close to his chest, they get all sorts of looks and whispers thrown their way.

“Noctis!”

The birthday girl swerves around from behind them, a hand on the prince’s arm. She’s got a bottle of raspberry cooler in her other hand, and her cheeks are flushed. She smells - very strongly - of perfume, the fruity kind that’s popular these days.

For the life of him, Prompto doesn’t remember her name.

“Thanks so much for coming out,” she beams. Her eyes flit over to Prompto, and she gives him a small, polite wave. “You too!”

“Yeah,” nods Noctis, shuffling on his feet. “Thanks for the invitation.”

He pauses, awkward, and Prompto jumps in: “Hey, uh - happy birthday!”

She bounces on the balls of her feet and grins in thanks.

The three of them stand for a moment in a stilted little triangle, and no one says anything. The girl clearly wants to say _something_ , probably get to know the prince better, but even in the relatively short time they’ve known each other Prompto senses that Noctis is probably a little overwhelmed and likely at the end of his rope already. He doesn’t know what to do though - you’re _supposed_ to hang out with the host at these things, right? It’d be pretty uncool of them to hide out in a corner all night...right? He chews his lip and takes a sip of his gross drink to hide his face, even if it’s just for a second.

“So…” she begins, but someone yells from the kitchen and three of them jump. “Ah, shit…”

She gives them an apologetic wave of the hand and says, “Sorry - gotta make sure no one breaks mom’s dishes and stuff, right? Enjoy the party!” before rushing off.

Prompto sees the slump of her shoulders, and feels a little sorry for her.

“Well...that was something,” he babbles a little, wanting to fill the air. “Haha, man these things are so awkward, right? I-I mean, we all see each other in class everyday, you’d think-”

Noctis bumps him with his elbow, “Relax, Prompto. You’re making it worse.”

He sighs, reaching up to tug at the ends of his hair with a strained chuckle, “Yeah, yeah - sorry.”

They do a circuit around the house, exploring and looking at things and at people for lack of anything else to do. No one else approaches them the whole time, too intimidated by the sight of the prince in his stark black casual clothing to try. Even when he tries so hard to blend in, Noctis always sticks out. Which must suck, Prompto thinks, thinking about how much Noctis just wants to quietly live his life.

The music they’ve got playing is bad - some shrill club banger that grates against the ears - and his drink tastes terrible. The other kids watching them aren’t subtle about it, and Prompto had forgotten to grab dinner before coming over so now he’s hungry and verging on grumpy. Is _this_ what all the fuss was about? He doesn’t think house parties are his thing if that’s the case...

Maybe he’s groaned one too many times, or something, because Noctis comes to a stop as they’re walking around the backyard and asks him what’s wrong.

“Nothing, nothing,” he says, then scuffs his heel against the floor of the deck. “Just...wasn’t what I was expecting, I guess?”

He can feel how pinched his face is as he says it.

Relief washes over him when he looks over at Noctis and sees him wearing a similar expression: “...Want to get out of here?” he asks, and Prompto nods so hard it feels like his head will pop off.

“You read my mind, buddy.”

They hide his nearly-full cup behind some picture frames and a lamp, and sneak out through the backyard gate.

When they hit the street, Noctis says, “I don’t really feel like going home, though…”

“Well,” Prompto shoves his hands into his pockets as he thinks, eyes looking up at the sky and watching the stars. “No one says the night has to be _over_. Wanna keep going?”

His friend turns, blinking owlishly in the dark. “You got an idea?” he asks, and curiosity makes his voice go high and soft. Boyish. It’s really cute.

Prompto tries not to stumble over his words as he responds, suddenly flustered and a little overwhelmed: “Y-yeah, kind of. Want to go to the pier?”

Noctis’ face brightens, and that pleased little grin pulls at his mouth as he says, “Music to my ears.”

*

They stop by a 24-hour corner store and grab some cheap, horribly unhealthy sugar-coated candy and a case of breezy, peach-flavoured whimpy beer with Prompto’s fake ID ( _“Y’know, I know it’s not manly to admit it, but I think I like this girly stuff a lot better,” Prompto had said, and they had snickered their way out of the store._ ) and make for the pier at the edge of Insomnia, where Noctis likes to go fishing.

This - _this_ is a night out: their feet ankle-deep in the water, watching the sunrise with lollipops in their mouths and Noctis’ cellphone between them, blasting music into the crisp night air. They’re halfway through the beer, buzzed enough for it to be fun but not enough for regrets in the morning. Which, Prompto glances down at the phone to check, is only a few hours away.

He cracks open the bag of candy and sifts through it, picking out a blueberry flavoured gummy in the vague shape of a behemoth. He hands the bag over to Noctis, who plucks out a handful of yellow, sugar-covered balls.  

“Ugh,” Noctis wrinkles his nose and spits out the candy onto his palm. It looks like a yellow raisin, wet and nasty. “Lemon.”

Prompto takes a sip from his can and raises a brow, “What’d you expect? It’s yellow.”

“Could’ve been banana.”

“Oh, ew,” Prompto snorts. “Banana candy sounds nasty.”

“Speak for yourself,” Noctis chucks one at his head and it clips his ear when he ducks. It lands in the water with a quit _plop_ . “You like _lemon_. Lemon stuff tastes like bathroom cleaner.”

“Please,” he teases. “Ignis does all your cleaning - you wouldn’t even know what it smells like.”

“I help…”

“Sure, and I’m the prince of Tenebrae.”

Noctis cracks up, “You don’t look a thing like Ravus.”

“Why not?” Prompto dips his hand into the water and sweeps the wet fingers through his hair. It’s a poor imitation of Ravus’ classy back-swept ‘do. He leans back and strikes a pose. “Blond, svelte, handsome...I could pass as his body double, for sure.”

That gets a big laugh, straight from the belly; Noctis reaches over and ruffles his hair, too drunk to rein down his strength and nearly bowling him over into the water. “You’re such a goon. And ‘ _svelte_ ’? Who are you, _Ignis_? No one talks like that!”

“Hey! I know big words sometimes!”

They shove at each other, laughing; Prompto tries to shove some of the lemon candy into Noctis’ mouth, and the prince reaches down to splash some water at his head.

He doesn’t know what it is, they’re not even really doing anything, but it’s the most fun he’s had in a while. He thinks maybe that he could do this, just this, forever - hanging out with Noctis, just the two of them, under the stars and laughing in their own little world where it feels like nothing else matters.

Way later Prompto will recognize, upon introspection, what the feeling is - the same as the ones scattered all over his wall in the studio. It’s the taut desire to pitch himself forward and touch Noctis’ lips with his own, to see what the sugar and alcohol taste like secondhand. But in the present, some rational part of him tries to push back at the sensation of buzzing underneath his skin, like hummingbirds clipping against the cage of his ribs and the contours of his mouth, his fingertips, his cheeks. He imagines he could explode like this, in a spray of birds and butterflies and indefinable, terrifying emotions.

At the edge of his awareness, as they settle down, he feels himself slotting his hands underneath his own thighs to clamp them tight to the ground. He thinks he might reach out and touch him, otherwise - not the friendly grappling that he’s _allowed_ to do, but the something more dangerous. Like cup his jaw or hold his hips. Touch the soft space on the inside of his elbows.

Drops of water crawl down the edge of his jawline and drop onto the space between his legs.

“Man,” whispers Noctis, looking up at the sky and chewing on a cherry-flavoured flan candy. Prompto wants to take pictures of his profile all day. “I’m so glad we ditched.”

“Me too.”

He left his polaroid at home tonight, so he takes out his phone instead and nudges Noctis to shift closer. The long line of the prince’s arm slots right up against his, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, and his skin is slightly cool from where their bare forearms are pressed flush together.

Prompto turns the flash on, and nabs an overbright selfie. It’s not the kind of picture he really wants to take, but it’s a compromise, a safe way to soothe the nerves running along his skin. Turning the phone around to check it out, he finds he’s happy with it - their cheeks are beer-flushed, and there’s candy all over their laps and the wood of the pier. Noctis’ phone glows between them, still playing its music softly into the night:

_“Have you no idea that you’re in deep?_

_I dreamt about you nearly every night this week._

_How many secrets can you keep?_

_Cause there’s this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow,_

_and I play it on repeat…”_

Days later, he’ll print out a copy of the photo on his phone and tack it up on the wall. He’ll surround it in stickers of lemons and bananas and wonder, wistfully, if things were always going to feel this way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
